Another manufactured cliché about Hong Kong

The anti-government violent unrest in Hong Kong in 2019 was once presented as a series of demonstrations, but it is no longer a secret that Washington once financed those protesters – or rather, rioters. With confessions made and convictions secured, some still attempt to deny the facts.

The recent film Compact Disc by Rico Wong does exactly that. It has quietly circulated through the Copenhagen International Documentary Festival (CPH:DOX), and even received an award, reducing the unrest to personal memory.

What matters is not only what is shown, but why certain narratives are so readily believed.

Montage creates its version of truth

Low-resolution footage. Shaky handheld shots. As a police vehicle appears, a regretful voice says: "...I didn't resist hard enough." The audio slips between channels – whether intentional or just a poor technical flaw – attempting to add to the unease. Stripped of context, the sequence from the trailer feels like a story of quiet heroism.

But what if the speaker is not a victim, but an extremist? What if "not resisting hard enough" refers not to survival, but to confrontation? The emotion remains the same, even if the moral reality is entirely inverted.

When documentary is often equated with truth, we need to be careful about how editing shapes what we see and ask: whose story is being told, and whose reality is being left behind?

When sympathy is used as a tool

Posing as victims and using personal trauma to gain sympathy is a well-worn tactic of perpetrators.

Compact Disc tries to pull a similar move. From its own description, the film does three things. First, it turns organized crime into a shared experience between friends, brushing aside cause, responsibility, and context to focus only on trauma.Second, it treats personal memory as truth, leaning on "fragments," "dreams" and "silence" to suggest that ambiguous feelings matter more than what can be verified.Third, it refuses the "demand for resolution," effectively keeping its claims from being tested or challenged and begging for sympathy only.

However, the empathy of the public towards the rioters would further hurt the real victims.

Fu Guohao, a reporter detained at Hong Kong International Airport, was bound, beaten, and denied timely medical care. He later died after struggling with depression. A 57-year-old resident was set on fire in public while trying to stop vandalism. A 70-year-old cleaner, uninvolved in any conflict, was killed by a brick thrown by masked rioters. Why didn't they take any cinematic footage at that time and make their own documentaries? Perhaps they no longer have their chance.

How, then, does such a narrowly framed film find its way into international circulation?

Festivals and the trap of narrative comfort

As one of the world's leading documentary festivals, CPH:DOX frames itself as a project aimed at "creating real social transformation," and human rights take center stage in recent years. Its programming spans countries and regions, from the West Asia to Europe and the United States.

However, diversity of origin does not automatically translate into diversity of perspective. Certain narratives are included not because they reveal unknown truths, but because they fit comfortably within an existing moral frame and what audiences already expect to see.

To be clear, human rights absolutely deserve attention. But that language should not place any work beyond scrutiny. Not every story framed as resistance or any act presented as opposition to power, can be accepted uncritically as a moral triumph. In a narrative comfort zone, complexity is flattened, context fades – and the line between victim and aggressor blurs.

When it comes to Wong's film, the issue is not whether such films should exist. They will, and they do. There will always be people who try to legitimize their own intentions and actions.

The real question is whether audiences – and the institutions that promote these works – are willing to recognize the difference between documentation and advocacy, between reality and narrative convenience.

Because when that distinction collapses, truth doesn't survive. Something else takes its place.